There are three kinds of liars: liars, damned liars, and then there's John McCain.
Here's what he says now:
MR. GREGORY: One question about the bailout, the TARP.
SEN. McCAIN: Oh, yeah.
MR. GREGORY: You voted for it, but you've said that you were misled by former Treasury Secretary Paulson. How so?
SEN. McCAIN: We were all misled. We were all misled. I mean, he said that they were going after the toxic assets. The toxic asset--his word--was the housing market. He testified to that. I mean, we were all misled. So what did he do then? They started pumping money into the financial institutions. ... They turned around and switched from trying to address the housing market to bailing out the financial institutions on Wall Street.
And here's what he said on October 7, 2008 in the second presidential debate:
SEN. McCAIN: This rescue package means that we will stabilize markets, we will shore up these institutions. But it's not enough. That's why we're going to have to go out into the housing market and we're going to have to buy up these bad loans and we're going to have to stabilize home values
To recap: McCain 2010 says he was misled on the bailout because he was told that it was for the housing market, not financial institutions. McCain 2008 said the bailout was to "shore up" financial institutions, not the housing market, which he said would need support through separate measures.
Bottom-line: McCain 2008 knew exactly what the bailout was for and how it would be used. But now that it turns out to be unpopular, he's claiming that somebody lied to him about what it would be used for. Turns out, the opposite is true. The exact opposite.
© Jed Lewison